Teens take pictures of space with balloon (40 pics)

The closest most of us 'round here will ever get to outer space is blogging about the Lunar X Prize, so our inner astronauts get rather giddy any time an amateur makes it to the cusp of the gravity well. The above photos were taken by the Meteotek team, a teacher and his four students from the IES La Bisbal school in Catalonia, Spain. The group designed and launched a balloon kitted out with a Nikon Coolpix and custom built electronics, intending to get some shots at 30,000 feet. Well exceeding their expectations, the $80 digicam (held aloft by a $60 latex balloon) reached over 100,000 feet, at which point it lost inflation and fell to the earth.

Yes, and these guys also had more computing power at their fingertips than would be available to Christopher Columbus for 500 years...yet I believe He made his voyage--computing power is totally beside the point.

Fact is, there is a great deal more evidence that we went to the moon than there is for the existence of god...one of the many reasons I believe we went to the moon, but don't believe in god.

Winston Churchill was famous for having said: "Preserve us from the maliciously ignorant and the aggressively stupid..."

But thanks for the entertaining stupidity, anyway...

er-Oh--and to the Meteotek Team... Fine work on the balloon and photographs, dudes! That's just awesome!

This is awesome.....I think this is great, that teachers are finally teaching their students something important. Thanks to all the great teachers, and thanks to all the not-so-great teachers, for the path they took.

Go to http://web.me.com/nicholasandersen/Site/About_Me.html for lots of awesome de-motivational posters! Digg it or thumbs up via stumbleupon! :)

albert, Computing power has nothing to do with it. All we needed to do was use enough fuel to get a rocket over 300ft tall far enough out to escape Earth's gravity. That was nothing to do with how good someone's CPU is.

If you're gonna call bullshit, post a link to prove it! And so what if we didn't actually go to the moon? Big whoop!

This is clearly shopped. I can tell from a few of the pixels and having seen quite a few shops in my day.

I think I'll go find the camera :P

anyone know how they got it down safely because at 100k' the foam doesnt look like it would help much. On top of that the drift from the wind must have made it near impossible to locate when it finally hit the earth.

Hummm... cool.

And the moon landings... shopped? filmed in paramount? You are aware, are you not, that the recordings were broadcast live from the moon? We can be certain that they were not broadcast from a location on earth, or from a satelite, because the AUSTRALIAN radio dish was knocked out of contact with the capsule and instead of confessing this to the Americans, relocated the capsule themselves, by fixing on the moon.

Unless you think that the US sent an unoccupied capsule to the moon to broadcast a fake landing back to eath?

these are fantastic! I'd love to use some of them as backgrounds for my art. sigh i never shoulda been allowed to read science fiction. spent the last 30 years wishing i could go to space.

This is totally plausible. The camera was definitely destroyed when it came back down, but believe it or not, a microSD card is a pretty stout memory drive. It takes a whole hell of a lot of force to break one of those things and I'm sure the casing for the camera acted as a nice cushion.

Anyone that honestly believes we didn't go to the moon needs to realize how simple of project it is. It doesn't take any computing power in all reality. All the telemetry was calculated using two hundred year old Newtonian Physics. Newton didn't have a computer period when he wrote those equations. The absolute HARDEST part of getting to the moon was getting out of the Earth's gravitational field because you have to reach a speed of about 25000 miles an hour, which becomes quite easy once you've reached the frictionless medium that is space.

On top of that, 75000 people worked on the Apollo missions. If it was fake, you would think that at least one of them would have come out by now. They're probably all just being brainwashed by the con-trails left behind by airliners, right? Of course they are...

why did they not record a video?I think it's all day dreaminif u wana go to outer space just apply to nasa u dump losers

Great work and amazing idea, only thing I am wondering is how they get the camera or the memory card back!?!

Nice project & pics, well done guys. ____ would like some more info though____ like how they tracked & got the camera back _______ but nothing new here & nothing that NASA could learn from________Spy orgs. & NASA + weather men + a host of others, have been doing this for yonks ___ cameras on balloons is old tech. !!!The Moon landings were a cert.!!!There is no way you could control the minds of the thousands of people involved ___ the contractors ,engineers + others ___ commercial companies were involved __ for money & not for a cover up __ these guys would know if they were working on a hoax.GET REAL & DON'T BELIEVE THIS CONSPIRACY CRAP DON'T BE DUMB

Peabody -- Don't know how this ended up under Rachaels post ??

Nice project & pics, well done guys. ____ would like some more info though____ like how they tracked & got the camera back _______ but nothing new here & nothing that NASA could learn from________Spy orgs. & NASA + weather men + a host of others, have been doing this for yonks ___ cameras on balloons is old tech. !!!The Moon landings were a cert.!!!There is no way you could control the minds of the thousands of people involved ___ the contractors ,engineers + others ___ commercial companies were involved __ for money & not for a cover up __ these guys would know if they were working on a hoax.GET REAL & DON'T BELIEVE THIS CONSPIRACY CRAP DON'T BE DUMB

Amazing in its own right, for sure.To anyone who would say otherwise, I have two things in response:1. I dare you to do better. 30 km straight up for under 200 USD, with clear pictures to boot? Fantastic.2. Trolls don't impress anyone. Nobody cares what the uneducated yokels think.

How did they get the pictuteres from the camera? There was a transmissor on the balloon?

This is wonderful! It shouldn't take billion-dollar grants to be able to make scientific process.

And for those of you who for some reason think this is an appropriate thread in which to sprout lunar-landing conspiracies, you might want to reflect on the idea that those with telescopes (and half a brain, but that's a different matter) can see debris the landing left behind. I'm so sure NASA and Paramount team up every night to project that image. Onto the moon.

I dont understand what is wrong with some of you people, this teacher and students are sharing something they felt was cool, who cares how high tech no tech and "NASA already does that", and for the ones who think NASA is lying about going to the moon, not just a bit mental here are ya. oh and for the one who was whining about wasting their life because they wanted to go to outer space, HELLO, life is what you make it so don't "WASTE" everyone else time with your issues. WAY to much negativity here.

for thouse of you who think we did go to the moon hello wake the fuck up. Dont you think that if it were true that we would have a damn motel 6 up there by now. But rather we have these run down beat up space stations that seam rather scary if you ask me. why send up shuttle after shuttle and not head back. why because we never went there. We had to be the first in the eyes of the world. So we faked it. There is a radation belt between us and the moon and it would be impossable for a human to survive going through it. For real come on you people are so fucking gulliable it sickning. but hey if it makes you feel good then more power too you. Do some real reasearch there are some atcual videos that got out of the real trip and how they made it apear that they were going further and further from earth when in fact they were in orbet and turning all lights off and getting as far from the window as possable and atcualy using a card board cut out to make it appear that they were far from earth. But in reality the earth filled the whole window the whole time because they were in orbet. It was all bullshit. 2012 space odesey was filmed and released just prior to the trip to the moon NOT so the american people would have an idea what it was supposed to look like. the director of the film was in fact the director of the fake tripp to the moon.

leperconsean, I'd suggest some basic grammar lessons before you attempt to wake up the "sheeple" or whatever the hell it is you want to call those of us who actually have an education. Of course, finishing high school may have helped you.

Your ignorance is "sickning".

On topic: Those are some very cool photos, and that was a great project!